Passage

[lightreads]

The Sharing Knife: Passage by Lois McMaster Bujold

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Book three in this romance-fantasy quartet with the cross-cultural marriage. Okay, maybe . . . maybe there's a reason you don't see much midwestern-influenced fantasy out there?



Wait, no, I'm being cheap. See, here's the thing:

Dag said more slowly, "He was just an ordinary patroller, before his knife got broken. But if ordinary folks can't fix the world, it's not going to get fixed. There are no lords here. The gods are absent."

Putting aside that this is an incredibly disingenuous thing for Dag to say, considering he's spent the series developing his unexpected magic powers. She's written books about lords and books about gods, and in theory I'm all on board for a universe that changes up those power discourses. It just turns out, I don't particularly want it to be this universe, where the solution to the world's troubles appears to be a thought just a few notches above 'can't we all just get along.' And also a universe where Dag calls Fawn "child" when they're in bed, argh argh argh! Where was I? Oh, right. There's homespun wisdom, sure, but mostly these are truths so simplified, they've lost all their density for me.



I suspect someone raised in this dialect, in the region that inspired these landscapes and this river, would find more here. I . . . didn't.




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Comments

[quietann.livejournal.com]

Passage was my least favorite of this series. I do think the "absent gods" idea -- meaning the people must rely on themselves -- is important, but it's not well developed at all.

This is not my favorite series at all, but there are bits I really like, and I was able to put aside my age-squick enough to really enjoy the first two books.

It almost feels like LMB got tired of the books mid-way through.

[lightreads.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's not active dislike I'm fostering over here. Just underwhelmed disappointment.